If you listened to a modern rock station like KROQ in the ’80s, or maybe watched MTV then when the M still stood for music, then you’ll likely recall the band Gene Loves Jezebel, fronted by identical twin brothers Jay and Michael Aston, whose hits included such songs as “Desire” and “Jealous” and “The Motion Of Love.”

But despite the rise of tours and festivals dedicated to the bands and artists who rose to prominence three decades or more ago, you haven’t been able to see Gene Loves Jezebel, at least not the most authentic version of that group, until now, when Jay Aston’s version of the band makes its first appearance in the United States in a decade at the Like Totally ’80s Festival in Huntington Beach on Saturday, May 12.

“To be honest it’s because my twin brother lives in California and he’s been using the name for the last 10 or 15 years,” Aston says by phone from York, England recently. “There’s been a lot of legal wrangling that’s gotten in the way of us coming over. And we can’t just jump in a van and do gigs, we’ve got to get flights, get visas.

“But people want to hear the guys who wrote and played those songs,” he says.

And now you can, as Jay Aston still plays with the guys who were part of the band in its heyday – guitarist James Stevenson, bassist Pete Rizzo and drummer Chris Bell.

Like Totally ’80s Festival also presents bands such as the Human League, Martha Davis and the Motels, the Alarm, Naked Eyes, Dramarama and Tiffany. But unlike Jay Aston’s Gene Loves Jezebel – his name is legally required as part of the group’s name to distinguish it from Michael Aston’s Gene Loves Jezebel – most of those other bands haven’t been away for as long, popping up for standalone shows, and none of them have a new album out of original material as Jay Aston’s GLJ does, its first in nearly two decades.

“We’ve always remained friends,” Aston says of the longtime band mates. “We’d always get together for one or two, sometimes four, gigs a year. We’d plug in and it always sounded like us.”

One of those gigs was always a festival in Portugal, where Gene Loves Jezebel has reamined popular, and after playing a two- or three-hour show there each year Aston says everyone felt caught up in the rush of good vibes and excitement the night provided.

“James and Pete always say, ‘Oh, we should get together and do a new album,’” Aston says. “But they say this every year and once we get on the plane … . Last year I said, ‘Every year we get together, but by the time you guys have sobered up and gotten home you get on with your lives.’”

So he held them to it last year, and by using a crowd-funding site instead of the old-fashioned record label deal to fund it, went into a proper studio with a proper producer, Peter Walsh, who’d worked with them in the ’80s, recorded and released “Dance Underwater.”

“Back in, for want of a better term, the old days the record label would pay for it and you’d go away and make it,” Aston says. “The way we do it, fans come to the studio as part of the pledge, we put up rough mixes. We were getting real feedback on what we were doing. It was great getting that reaction as opposed to you sit in the studio and that’s all you get.”

The band and the record sound great, Aston says, despite all the years that have passed since the group’s early days.

“We’re not trying to be 20 anymore or look like we did in 1985,” he says. “It’s always been about the music for us. Some people felt it was the image, but music was always the most important.”

Which is why he views his twin’s insistence on touring as Gene Loves Jezebel with his own group of newer musicians as such a betrayal.

“Imagine if you were me and you’ve got someone out there who was happy in the day to mime your vocals on stage and on videos,” Aston says. “Doesn’t write any songs or play any instruments and suddenly he’s out there pretending to be Gene Loves Jezebel.

“It’s not good,” he says. “I don’t speak to him at all. I can’t understand why he’d want to be using my name.”

So he’s looking forward to this gig on the beach in Huntington, and hopefully more U.S. dates later in the year. And who knows, another record sooner than later, especially given the support fans gave this one.

“You never know,” Aston says about the future. “We like making music. We’ve obviously found a way of doing it and we have fans who like us doing it. And I write a lot of songs.”

Peter Larsen has been the Pop Culture Reporter for the Orange County Register since 2004, finally achieving the neat trick of getting paid to report and write about the stuff he's obsessed about pretty much all his life. He regularly covers the Oscars and the Emmys, goes to Comic-Con and Coachella, reviews pop music, and conducts interviews with authors and actors, musicians and directors, a little of this and a whole lot of that. He grew up, in order, in California, Arkansas, Kentucky and Oregon. Graduated from Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Ore. with degrees in English and Communications. Earned a master's degree at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. Earned his first newspaper paycheck at the Belleville (Ill.) News-Democrat, fled the Midwest for Los Angeles Daily News and finally ended up at the Orange County Register. He's taught one or two classes a semester in the journalism and mass communications department at Cal State Long Beach since 2006. Somehow managed to get a lovely lady to marry him, and with her have two daughters. And a dog named Buddy. Never forget the dog.